Levels

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Saturday, February 23, 2013, 22:05 (4289 days ago)

We pretty much have confirmation from the stats shown in the vidoc (on a smartphone in about the middle of the video), Destiny's going to have various things to level up. I assume these affect gameplay, because otherwise I don't think there would be a point.
I don't dislike RPGs, I'm not against them... I've had a lot of fun with Zelda games and I liked several older games that had varying degrees of RPG-ish-ness, but one thing about them that has basically zero appeal to me is leveling up attacks, weapons, abilities, or traits so they're more useful. What I do dislike is when a game actively makes whether I make it through something or not a matter of random chance, not just in enemies and weapons but it whether what I do even works. The grinding factor in leveling up is pretty obvious. I more or less trust Bungie to not have anything worthwhile require effort to the point I feel like I'm grinding to progress. I'm not really an Ultra MLG guy or anything but I like for my skill to be the main deciding factor in how I do in a game, and having to level up tends to go against that. That's a trickier thing to deal with, it seems, and issues with randomness should hardly be a stranger to any gamer.
What I'm getting at is basically just that I don't like those mechanics and I'm wondering if, because of that, I'm not going to like Destiny. I don't want that. I'm not asking Bungie to change up their game (it would be pretty nice if they did but I wouldn't ask them to do that), and I'm not really complaining. I'm not quite sure what to make of what I've found out about Destiny or what I should be hoping for. I think I wanted to get that stuff off my chest and see if I can find any reassurance.
In case it helps, and since I already typed most of it, here's some background. There was one game I played that had this kind of mechanic where I didn't mind it. The game was Illusion of Gaia, and I didn't mind because the player only levels up a few different traits and has basically no control over when it happens-- if you beat certain groups of enemies, you level up certain traits; if you skip stuff, you level up whatever traits by however many groups you skipped when you beat the boss for the area, or the boss for the next area if the one you're in doesn't have a boss. The only other game I've put much time into that had that kind of mechanic was Rygar for the NES. I didn't mind the grind as a 7-year-old with budding OCD tendencies and you seemed to start powerful enough and then progress towards being ridiculously powerful (depending on which enemies you decided to go up against, some were pretty tough), but I could feel it get tedious after a while. When I got an Xbox, I got some games for it that I heard were good. One of them was SW: KotOR. My first impressions were good but as I read the manual and it started talking about dice for no apparent reason I was put off. I still tried the game and it seemed like it would in fact be a nice romp around a galaxy. Then they gave me a gun, but when I tried to shoot it, it didn't matter how much I adjusted my aim and position and it barely mattered how close I was, the shots didn't go where I was aiming most of the time. Before too long I realized (or was told by a character, I don't remember) that I'd have to level up shooting to aim better. I gave the game about five more minutes, put it away, and never looked back. Given that Destiny is supposed to be an FPS first and foremost and Bungie has plenty of experience with shooters, I doubt that problem will show up, but I'm concerned about whatever else is in the game-- Halo has gained what you could call the ability to level up driving, grenades, and even reloading, and Destiny might have a bunch of stuff besides what you tend to find in an FPS. (for magic rant, please press 1)